The Bridge Tower Asteroid
Impact

I. Introduction

This page regards a very odd, yet classic tale.
It starts out a simple one . . . in The Empire Strikes Back, a Star Destroyer
escorting Vader's Executor quite obviously loses its bridge tower due to
asteroid impact. The canon script and novel suggest that the entire
ship exploded, besides. However, remarkably, the opposition insists
that the ship was neither destroyed, nor even damaged appreciably.
Take a look at the following, and draw your own conclusions:

BTA2.avi (DivX4, ~180kb)

First, let's take a look at a few general frames from that scene from the
Cinemax HD version:

The asteroid approaches
The two meet
Post-impact
The aftermath

Following the above, we end up on the
Executor, as Vader (via holoconference) addresses a few of his captains
regarding the Falcon chase. One of these captains is standing calmly, and
then raises his hands as if he's about to be hit by something, and the image
begins to distort and fade away.

II. The Counterclaims

The notion that an ISD could be felled by a 'mere' hurtling mass of
asteroidal material is anathema to some, and thus a variety of counterarguments
have been presented.

A. Stills of Glow and Shadow

As visible pre-impact, the more distant Super Star Destroyer Executor is
emitting an unusual orange glow around her ventral stern, presumably mere
refraction of her engine glow from within the engine bells. We see the
same effect soon thereafter as the Executor emerges from the asteroid belt, as
seen in the cropped shot below:

Assorted claims have been made regarding this glow region in the aftermath
frames. For instance, if you draw lines near it you can make shapes that
are similar to the shape of the Star Destroyer's neck area, as with these:

However, the flaw in such maneuvers is that the tower could not have been at
either location. In the below, I have overlaid the Star Destroyer from the
impact frame (offset upward a bit for ease of reference, and also leaving a
little bit of the glow from behind the neck to make the neck more apparent) onto
the final frame, lining them up based on the remaining Star Destroyer hull
details:

Note well that there is a gap between the area where some would like to draw
lines and the area where the neck of the Star Destroyer would actually be.
If the dark area is not the shadow of the undamaged neck of the Star Destroyer,
then one cannot claim that the shadow proves the bridge tower and its neck were
undamaged.

Furthermore, note where the bridge tower is in the overlay above,
and note where the bridge globes are.

They don't exist in the non-overlaid frame:

Indeed, let's take a closer, brightened look:

(Click image for larger version)

Up where those two sparks are,
side-by-side in front of the Executor's lateral trench area, we ought to be
seeing the portside globe of the ISD's bridge tower. We do not.

To the left of the dust cloud, we ought to be seeing the starboard half of
the ISD's bridge tower. We do not.

(Some have claimed that it is merely
obscured by dust, but that is absurd . . . the main hull just to the left of the
dustcloud is clearly visible, as are the hull and even the window lights of the
Executor above!)

B. Movement

For the sake of fairness, it's worth noting that a slightly-better-than-cursory
glance at the scene does reveal something of interest. If you note the
unusual orange glow of the Executor's engines against her own hull in the video,
you might catch a glimpse of what looks like a moving shadow . . . basically the
same one being claimed in the above. The problem, of course, is that
it is in the wrong place, and thus does not represent an undamaged bridge tower
neck. One could argue that a portion of the neck was not
shattered but hung on, dragged behind the ship by some tenuous, warped frame
members . . . but there's no way to be sure.

(In reality, this is probably a sloppy hold-out matte . . . a special effects
artifact from pre-CGI days . . . left not-cleaned-up because it was obscured by
the dust cloud. Obviously they did clean up the hold-out matte where it
was supposed to cover up the Executor trench area.)

C.
The Captain's Survival

There's also the argument that, because the captain
is not already dead by the time we cut to the Executor bridge and Vader's
holoconference, then the bridge of the destroyed ISD must've survived for some
amount of time.

From the
perspective of your average movie-goer, the captain's apparent demise was just a
rewind of a few seconds. But, for the purpose of debating (where the films
are documentary-style, linear footage), this cannot be. And so, they
claim, his survival for a few more seconds must indicate that the tower was not
obliterated.

(Some have suggested the
slightly more reasonable position that the tower was destroyed, but that somehow
the area around the bridge itself was knocked off but more or less unaffected,
with the captain able to transmit and act perfectly normal until the bridge
finally started to disintegrate. However, the notion that the bridge could
be knocked off, while still having power, being capable of transmissions, and
without even a jostle of the captain makes little sense. First, the
low-speed collision of two ISDs during the Falcon chase involved the crew
getting knocked around quite severely . . . the notion that the captain of a
ship hit much harder would not get knocked around at all doesn't follow.
Second, the Rebel ion cannon that knocked out an ISD cut the entire ship's
power, which suggests that the power systems are not so robust as to be capable
of independent operation when the area around the ship has been wiped out.)

Putting
this claim of bridge survival to rest is an easy one. The bridge is in the
forwardmost top center of the bridge tower. If the bridge were present,
we should be able to see it just as easily as we should be able to see the rest
of the tower, and the starboard side.

Therefore,
the captain could not have been on the bridge.

So
where was he transmitting from? There's no way to tell. Even in
AoTC, Obi-Wan's little Jedi fighter was sufficient to have a holographic
communication system aboard, so it isn't like the things have to be monstrously
huge. We even saw a small walking unit in TPM. He could've
been in his quarters, or in the engineering section, or really just about
anywhere that had a sending unit (and probably a holoprojector, too, but not
necessarily).

And so, we see the flaws in
that argument . . . a peculiar belief that the bridge tower simply became
invisible but still survived, mixed with an unsupportable assumption regarding
the captain's location.

D. Debris

Some have argued that we should've expected to see a great deal more debris from the
tower. Thus, the claim goes, the tower was not destroyed.

Though I agree
that more debris would've made the scene look more realistic, the leap of logic
that the tower was not destroyed is unsupportable. The bridge tower
is gone. If it was not destroyed, then where did it magically run off to?
Even if we generously presumed that the neck snapped and the tower survived
intact, tumbling off into space, it would still have to be at least partially
visible behind the dust cloud by the end of the scene, even if it tumbled off at
the best possible angle and trajectory.

In short, this claim is a fair effort, but still makes no sense in the light
of what we can see.

(I
also enjoy this claim of Mike Wong's for another reason. The TESB asteroid-shooting scene
is another featuring something being destroyed with little to no visible
debris. Wong claims the lack of debris is indicative of vaporization . . .
but in this case, he claims the reverse.)

III. So what did happen?

At barest minimum, the bridge tower of the Star
Destroyer was totally annihilated by asteroid impact.

The
captain, in some other location aboard the ship, was killed by some secondary
effect (a reactor explosion, continuing hull disintegration, or
what-have-you). This indicates that the destruction did not end with the
final frame of the external scene. If the ship's destruction
continued for several seconds after the cut to the holoconference scene, then we
have firm support for the lesser-canon screenplay and novel, both of which
suggest that the entire ship was destroyed (specifically, "exploded")
as a result of the asteroid collision.

Therefore,
the only logical, canonical conclusion is that the entire ship was destroyed, as
the absolute canon of the films is not contrary to this.

IV. The Challenge

Any opponent who continues to claim that the Star
Destroyer bridge tower visibly survives must account for the following:

1.
The absent bridge tower center and starboard section2. The visibility of Executor lights through the dust where the bridge
port globe should be.3. The fact that nowhere is the Executor engine glow obscured by the
bridge tower.4. The fact that we can't see the thing anywhere.

Below, we have a cropped version of the earlier overlay, brightened in keeping
with the brightened final frame from II.A . . . move your mouse on and off of the image to swap between the overlay and the
non-overlay view. (Confirmed working in IE, Mozilla, Opera)

And so that's the challenge . . . explain the missing pieces.

As
I have set forth an impossible task, I feel quite comfortable in concluding that
there will be no takers.